On 10/13/2013 08:02 PM, Mark Wieder wrote:
Richmond-
Sunday, October 13, 2013, 12:30:10 AM, you wrote:
Anyone can code rather like any European can speak Mandarin Chinese;
with an incredible amount of effort, time and instruction.
True, but I think it misses the point somewhat. I haven't seen the ad
in question, so I can't comment on that directly. I can, however, say
that coding like a European speaking Mandarin may be enough to spark
some interest in going further and then diving head (or feet, it
matters not) first into the LC world, making mistakes, asking for
help, and then gaining enough experience along the way to start
helping others on the same path.
I cannot disagree with that.
What I disagree with is RunRev's way of trying to achieve it with
adverts that imply learning to use xTalk
is dead easy.
It's the community paying it forward
that moves this process along, not so much the documentation or the
training materials. But the introductory materials are very important
for those crucial first steps.
If I were to state "I speak Bulgarian", giving the imporession that I
have a very high standard in the language that would be dishonest and wrong.
...and after x years of xtalk, would you say you could code?
Not nearly as well as I would like to.
I can function in certain areas rather well (think Unicode and funny
writing systems), and awfully
in some other areas (I will forgo those revelations), just as I can
function vis-a-vis running my school
and telling parents that 'little Ivan' is "brilliant", and 'little
Mitko' is "as thick as mince", and go shopping
in Bulgarian.
I can code a subset of the Livecode dialect of xTalk, just as I can
speak a subset of Bulgarian.
I don't
think it's a binary yes-or-no question... I think there are levels and
degrees of knowledge, experience,
Well put.
comfort...
'comfort', really, do tell :) Err, but I digress.
However both the Bulgarian and the xTalk 'came' over a number of years.
The children who came along in June and July, while being able to cobble
together a clone of a very basic pocket calculator, and make a 'game'
with pictures of Super Mario moving around the screen, do not have the
level of skill I have, and are not
likely to for a while yet; and never without a lot of very hard work.
If I had told them that they would be making "whizz-bang" programs for
Android licketty-split, children that
they be (Hey, score another one there, that's the fourth subjunctive
construction I've managed
this week - whoops, sorry; personal bee in my bonnet), they,
nevertheless are not so green-as-cabbage-looking
that they would not have laughed at such a daft prediction.
This seems to be the implication of the "Be This Guy" (Jimmy Neutron's
next-door neighbour perhaps)
school of advertising.
While being a rightwing sort of chap, I'm all for "power to the people"
when it involves education
and educational/creative empowerment [just leave out the collective
farms]; but an advertising campaign that
pandered to people's ambitions in a relatively realistic way rather than
Jimmy Neutronesque characters
might do better. I don't know how things are nowadays, but I do have the
feeling that a lot of the teenagers
that "This Guy" might appeal to [Oh, and it's sexist, too] probably
don't have the crinklies to hand for
a commercial licence; while theor Mums and Dads might, they might also
take a dim view of forking out
for something that seems infantile (which we all know isn't true; but do
they?).
Most people on this Use-List, unless they are lying their socks off, are
all in favour of the installed user base
of Livecode increasing, for all sorts of reasons. Most people on the
Use-List are well aware of the time and
effort that goes into getting comfy and relatively competent with a
computing language.
Richmond.
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